Welcome to AN Joey
I relate to the “12 hours of outside school activities” – I had about the same in year 12, all of which were after school and on weekends. Anyway here’s my take at your questions -
1. What are your study routines?What I did was to make a to-do list every Sunday evening of tasks I need to do the following week – small ones, like “Lit: 1 essay, timed” or “Chem: 2 pages of chapter review Qs”. I’d work through it during the week, and if there’s any items left over, I would use my spare time on weekends to work on what’s left. This ensures that I’m not leaving anything more than a week overdue and also motivates me to do everything before Friday, so I can use my weekends to chill and work on other activities.
2. Do you guys wake up early to study or stay up late to study?I’m a night-owl through and through but I always woke up early to study – not because that’s when my brain functions best but because I have too many afterschool activities. 4:30 seems a
bit too early IMO but it depends on the person. If you’re not tiring yourself out and is still able to get enough hours of sleep, then why not?
3. What time do you usually sleep and wake up?On weekdays I woke up at 6am, which leaves me an hour to study. That said, I wouldn’t recommend doing any homework in the morning – I usually use that hour to read over sample essays, try to commit some good phrases to memory, memorise history dates, or go over chem/methods mistakes that I made the previous day. I find going over mistakes you’ve made before in the morning
really helps, because you’re more likely to remember exactly what made you stumble and is less likely to avoid such mistakes in the future.
I didn’t stick to a consistent time of when to sleep (varies between 11pm and 2am) and I full on regret it now.
4. Any other suggestions?Remember to have a healthy balance between study and other activities. I know 12 hours of activities seems quite overwhelming in year 12, and when I was in year 12 I was
definitely overwhelmed by it, which led me to quit a couple after term one. Looking back I wish I didn’t,
instead I wish I had organised my schedule so that all these activities offered good mental breaks from study, instead of something that caused more stress. With your 12 hours of extracurriculars, I would suggest that you space them out evenly throughout the week, if you can – that way you’re less likely to burn out from constant studying.
Good luck.